Forget Sparta and Athens. The 2012 presidential race is shaping up to be a battle between Sparta and Sparta.

If Mitt Romney is able to overcome Tuesday night’s caucus disappointments and win the GOP nod, the Obama/Romney general election match-up will feature two very similar campaign empires—both flush with cash and stacked with their party’s best political operatives—going to battle with the same instincts, same skill sets, and very similar battle plans.

“Both are big, disciplined, ruthlessly efficient enterprises,” said Republican strategist Alex Castellanos. “Obama is not very good at being president, but he is relentless at wanting to be president. Romney’s campaign is similarly like a bulldozer. It overwhelms opponents tactically, with money, TV, and power, crushing movable objects with irresistible force.”

The similarities are partly the fruits of imitation. The Obama campaign in 2008 redefined presidential campaigning and organizing for the Internet era, and elements of Romney's campaign (like most this cycle), from his streamlined logo to the one-upsmanship of his online fundraisers, have a touch of homage. People involved in Romney's Internet operation in particular will, when pressed, concede a grudging respect for their counterparts in Chicago.

But there are more straightforward similarities as well. Both operations are located in second cities—Romney’s in Boston, and Obama’s in Chicago—where the campaigns have tried to co-opt the local color to lend their efforts an air of authenticity. (For proof, follow the Twitter feeds of either campaign’s operatives during Bulls or Celtics games.)

And while neither campaign is headquartered in D.C., they’re each loaded with practiced Washington hands. The officials’ experience has eliminated most of the kinks and leaks that dog more amateur operations, and each campaign is run like a kind of soulless machine — devoid of spontaneity, and utterly allergic to anything that takes them off message. Take, for example, the Romney camp's firing of debate coach Brett O’Donnell after he got too much credit in the press for the candidate’s game-changing Florida debate performances.

With former newspaper reporters near the top— former Boston Herald writer Eric Fehrnstrom with Romney, former Chicago Tribune City Hall bureau chief David Axelrod with Obama—the campaigns share a similarly distant, transactional relationship with the press that belies their familiarity with journalistic mischief.

Team Romney’s stingy record of access to the candidate, dubbed the “Mittness Protection Program,” has led Romney to go several days without taking reporters’ questions. Obama, meanwhile, uses technology to avoid the White House press corps. (He’s held just 17 press conferences in his first term, more than President George W. Bush, but less than Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush, and Ronald Reagan at similar points in their administrations.

While reporters complain about being shut out, the shared media strategy is relentlessly effective, said Peter Daou, a senior communications staffer on Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign.

"The Romney campaign is adept at rolling out endorsements at exactly the right time, trying to step on their opponents' message...and being able to dominate the news cycle or grab it back if they feel like it's time," Daou said. "Clearly, that's something they learned from the Obama campaign."

“Both are corporate campaigns,” said Castellanos. “It is incredibly difficult to build overnight huge, multi-million dollar enterprises, businesses the size of major companies, and make them run efficiently. Both have demonstrated the ability to do that... and both campaigns have built cults around their candidates, seeing them as transformational leaders.”

But for all the campaigns’ similarities, the two candidates at the top couldn’t be more different in their management styles.

Staffers say Romney approaches politics with the same deliberate decision-making that made him a star in the investment consulting world. He crunches the numbers, then confidently makes his best bet supported by the data. To him, running a presidential campaign—like running anything else—comes down to simply math.

Obama, on the other hand, spent much of his adult life in law schools and legislatures, where a premium is put on thorough, nuanced intellectual debate. According to insider White House accounts like Ron Suskind’s Confidence Men, Obama likes to spends hours, and even days, debating tough issues with staff before eventually clearing the room and noodling out a decision based on the best arguments he’s heard.

“To make a good movie, my Hollywood friends tell me, you want the hero and villain to be similar as possible, not as different as imaginable, because they are ultimately fighting for the same thing: money, power, or the girl,” Castellanos said. “[Obama and Romney] just come at the same goal from different directions. We are making a very good movie in 2012.”

A Romney/Obama race would certainly depart from 2008, when John McCain’s by-the-seat-of-the-pants campaign kept Chicago—and the American public—guessing at what he’d do each day. Romney, by contrast, would likely never consider McCain’s Sarah Palin gambit: a high-risk, high-reward veep pick would be anathema to his consultant roots.

A preview of the upcoming battle came last week, as the web teams for both campaigns sought to one-up each other with dueling online fundraisers. The Romney campaign launched the “one-term fund” to raise $1 million, which was quickly followed by Obama’s “two-term fund” to raise $2 million. Romney’s team then held up the Obama response as an example that the president is focused on campaigning instead of government — tacitly acknowledging that the Obama fundraising machine had won the day.

In another glimpse of the campaign to come, the candidates' respective messaging gurus, Fehrnstrom and Axelrod, have often taken to Twitter to needle each other for the entire political press to see — and, of course, write about. Take, for instance, this exchange that took place last month, days before the South Carolina primary:

The two went back and forth like this for a while, exchanging barbs and statistics like two students who were trained by the same debate coach. They ended like this:

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As per TLC's press release:

As one of the nation’s most historic neighborhoods, South Boston is known for hard-working residents who display an outrageous passion for life, family, and town. Now, TLC takes viewers into this the tight-knit community in the new TLC series SOUTHIE PRIDE (wt), going inside the homes of five South Boston women as they struggle to make a life for their families and protect the people they love the most.

“Spend some time with the women of South Boston and you quickly learn that pride runs deep, family comes first, and that their friendships and rivalries are forever,” said SallyAnn Salsano, President of 495 Productions. “And, their accents are wicked awesome.”

The people and streets, and accents, of South Boston – or, Southie – have been the backdrop of hit movies and the focus of best-selling books, and now you’ll meet the city’s real-life characters as they celebrate their friendships, battle their rivals, and raise their children. SOUTHIE PRIDE offers an insider’s look at the faith, hard work, and family that make this blue-collar enclave Beantown’s beating heart. Get ready to experience the loudest, proudest, most in-your-face subculture on the Eastern Seaboard.

As New England native I can only say that I already prefer the parody edition:

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Source: youtube.com

Source: twitvid.com

by Kristin Caffray

Source: safesounds

by Kristin Caffray

Source: safesounds

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The incident that has caused problems for the pub took place last winter when a group of friends went to Peggy O'Neil's to celebrate a birthday. The celebrant, who was white, was welcomed in without much problem, but many of the people in the group were minorities (African American, Hispanic, and Cape Verdean) and they were refused entry.

The birthday girl went back outside to try to intervene, but to no avail, as owner Caron O'Neil stood firm.

Source: boston.com

Source: boston.com

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A roving reporter visits Cirque Eloize in Boston and lets a trial bike rider use him for some stunt work.

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   FBI special agent Richard Deslauriers, right, speaks during a news conference next to a poster featuring fugitives James "Whitey" Bulger and Catherine Greig at the FBI field office in Boston, Monday, June 20, 2011. FBI agents on the trail of Bulger are turning to TV ads aimed at women as they try to bring the fugitive Boston mob boss to justice after 16 years on the run. The 30-second ad is scheduled to start running Tuesday in 14 television markets.(AP Photo/Michael Dwyer) BOSTON (AP)--Federal officials in Boston say a tip led the FBI to begin surveillance on former mob boss James "Whitey" Bulger's apartment in Santa Monica, Calif., Wednesday afternoon. The FBI finally caught the 81-year-old Bulger and longtime girlfriend Catherine Greig later that day. Bulger had been on the run for 16 years. U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz says the pair were using the aliases Charles and Carol Gasko. The arrests come just days after the government launched a publicity campaign to locate the fugitive crime boss by circulating pictures of Greig on daytime TV and on billboards. The FBI says the tip came from that campaign. Federal officials say Bulger was arrested without incident.

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   (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

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“This is what we call clownin' folks!” says local sports commentator guy. This is also the type of stunt that might get you a forearm shiver from Andrew Bynum in the NBA.

The Best Links:

1. Rajon Rondo’s “Piggy-Back” Dunk From High School

This is adorable. During the broadcast of a Cleveland Indians/Boston Red Sox game, a couple of guys casually kiss each other in front of a reporter. The best part is the awkward reaction of the obviously uncomfortable commentators in the booth.

Accents thicker than a juicy faht.

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This fight at a Denny's in Chicopee, Massachusetts erupted when a woman asked the table next to her if she could borrow the syrup. The response to the query: “Bitch, your pancakes look fine to me.” Hell soon followed.

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   Transcription: Joe Wood, Say your final farewells at once as you will be no more within a short time. You will be in danger every moment from now on, especially on the grounds. nothing stops us, and we never fail to put an end to our victim. Two others go with you from your team one higher up and lower. We wont even warn them they will go with you. Two men from New York will accompany you and one from Wash. We warn you we never fail. Add. on envelope is false. We never fail. This easy money getting must be stopped. Eight of our gang took up your trail yesterday.

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A wicked awesome re-imagining of Mad Man had it taken place in modern day Boston instead of 1960s New York.

Aah, what a dork!

A museum in Boston dedicated to art “too bad to be ignored.”

The Best Links:

1. Listen to One Dude’s Visit to MOBA
2. Masterpieces Can, Indeed, Be Found in “Trash Heaps and Garbage Cans”
3. I’ll See Your MOMA, and Raise You 2 MOBA’s
4. Art That’s “Creepy, Odd, and Just Plain Bad?” Now THAT’S Worth a Trip to Boston.
5. MOBA: The Collection